Beacon Broadside: A Project of Beacon Presstag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-14005452015-12-29T15:27:43-05:00Ideas, opinions, and personal essays from respected writers, thinkers, and activists. A project of Beacon Press, an independent publisher of progressive ideas since 1854.TypePadBeacon's Bestsellers of the Yeartag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301bb08a48a53970d2015-12-29T15:27:43-05:002015-12-29T15:13:15-05:00What’s your News Years resolution? To read more books, of course! But where to start? Why not with our bestsellers? For your perusal, we’ve put together a list of our bestsellers this year. We are so thrilled that some of these titles that have appeared on best-of lists, have won and have been nominated for awards! You can get these titles, as well as all our other titles, for 30% off using code HOLIDAY30 through December 31st. You still have time. Check out our website.Beacon Broadside

What’s your News Years resolution? To read more books, of course! But where to start? Why not with our bestsellers? For your perusal, we’ve put together a list of our bestsellers this year. We are so thrilled that some of these titles that have appeared on best-of lists, have won and have been nominated for awards! You can get these titles, as well as all our other titles, for 30% off using code HOLIDAY30 through December 31st. You still have time. Check out our website.

Nancy Ellen Abrams, philosopher of science, lawyer, and lifelong atheist, explores a radically new way of thinking about God in A God That Could Be Real. The omniscient, omnipotent God that created the universe and plans what happens is incompatible with science, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a God that can comfort and empower us. In her paradigm-shifting blend of science, religion, and philosophy, Abrams imagines a higher power in the new science of emergence. God, she argues, is an “emergent phenomenon” that arises from the staggering complexity of humanity’s collective aspirations and is in dialogue with every individual. This God created the meaning of the universe and helps us change the world.

After a freak accident during a pick-up game of basketball in his junior year at Harvard, writer Howard Axelrod became permanently blind in his right eye. His perception of the world and of himself lost its sense of balance and solidity. The distance between how others saw him and how he saw himself widened into a gulf. Desperate for a stable sense of orientation, and reeling from a failed romance with a woman in Italy, Axelrod retreated to a jerry-rigged house in the Vermont woods, where he lived without a computer or television, and mostly without human interaction, for two years. His lyrical memoir The Point of Vanishing, named as one of Laura Miller’s 10 favorite books of 2015 on Slate.com and selected for many other best book lists, follows him in his search for identity and the stabilizing beauty of nature.

In his biography One Righteous Man, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Arthur Browne not only chronicles the life of Samuel Battle, an unjustly forgotten civil rights pioneer, he also creates an important and compelling social history of New York. Samuel Battle, the New York Police Department’s first ever black officer, broke the color line as early as the second decade of the twentieth century. The son of former slaves in the South, Battle led an against-all-odds journey to the top of his career, facing racism from his own colleagues, further hostility from criminals, and death threats. He had to be three times better than his white peers and many times more resilient. His smarts, strength, and outsized personality carried him through the trajectory of his career and the bustling cultural milieu of the first half of the twentieth century. One Righteous Man has been nominated for the NAACP Image Award.

Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s American Book Award-winning An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States has truly resonated with readers. Covering four centuries of Native Americans actively resisting expansion of the US empire, colonialism, and the attendant systemic injustices against them, it is the first book of its kind—a history of our country told from the perspective of Indigenous nations. It challenges the pervasive mythos of our colonial heritage and gives a voice to the participants in American history that for long stretches of time were silenced.

First published in 1959, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning continues to be relevant to this day. Based on his own experiences in Nazi death camps and the stories of his patients, his memoir argues that while suffering is unavoidable, we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward. This year, his book helped late-night talk show host Jimmy Fallon through his ring avulsion accident and Chris Martin, lead vocalist of the English rock back Coldplay, through his breakup with actress Gwyneth Paltrow. Indeed, the enduring influence of Man’s Search for Meaning is broad and far-reaching.

Renowned as the ambassador for nonviolent protest and celebrated as one of the greatest orators in our history, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. isn’t usually recognized for his radical thinking. As Cornel West informs us in The Radical King from our King Legacy Book Series, the FBI and the US government knew just how radical he was. West edited and wrote an introduction to this collection that showcases Dr. King’s revolutionary vision: his identification with the poor, his crusade against global imperialism, his unapologetic opposition to the Vietnam War. The Radical King shows one of the most recognizable leaders of the civil rights movement to be every bit as radical as Malcolm X.

Sometimes Nature’s salvation comes in the form we least expect. In The New Wild, named one of the best books of 2015 by The Economist, environmental journalist Fred Pearce explains how invasive species are crucial in helping nature regenerate. His provocative exploration of this new ecology scrutinizes our misconceptions—and misgivings—about alien species. His travels across six continents show how the rewilding of the earth owes itself to the alien species that settle down and become model eco-citizens. In an era of climate change and widespread ecological damage, Pearce argues that we need to let go of our idea of reengineering ecosystems and embrace Nature’s helpful invaders.

Hailed by the Washington Post as one of the notable nonfiction books of 2015, Eileen Pollack’s The One Woman in the Roomasks why science is still a boys’ club, even in the twenty-first century. Part memoir and part case study, her book compiles her personal experiences with those of young women today, and honestly explores the most recent findings about why women often choose not to pursue careers in STEM (sciences, technology, engineering, mathematics). Pollack herself, novelist, short story writer, and professor of creative writing, was one of the first two women to earn a Bachelor of Science in physics from Yale in 1978. Her book not only documents the subtle disincentives women in the sciences still face, but also provides hope for changing attitudes and behaviors in ways that could bring far more women in the fields where they’re underrepresented.

There is such a thing as too much medical care, which can become excessive, ineffective, and sometimes harmful. Dr. H. Gilbert Welch’s provocative Less Medicine, More Health diagnoses seven widespread assumptions that have convinced the American public that seeking medical care is one of the most important steps to maintain wellness. Drawing from fascinating stories and compelling data, Dr. Welch proves that it’s not always better to fix the problem, that sooner (or newer) isn’t always better, that getting more information can actually be detrimental. Too many people are made to worry about diseases and afflictions they don’t have. Medical care, surprisingly, is not well correlated with good health. Dr. Welch’s book could save you money and, more importantly, improve your health outcome.

Re-thinking Nature’s Aliens: How True Bio-diversity Benefits Us Alltag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b7c78a704c970b2015-05-14T14:58:33-04:002015-05-14T14:58:33-04:00The successful spread of invasive species–even with humans lending a helping hand–is often a sign of nature’s dynamism, not its enfeeblement. A sign that nature is not done, but can bounce back. True environmentalists should be applauding the invasive species.Beacon Broadside

Alien species are taking over nature. Rogue rats, predatory jellyfish, suffocating super-weeds, snakehead fish wriggling across the land–all are headed for an ecosystem near you. These biological adventurers are travelling the world in ever greater numbers, hitchhiking in our hand luggage, hidden in cargo holds and stuck to the bottom of ships. Our modern, human-dominated world of globalized trade is giving footloose species many more chances to cruise the planet and set up home in distant lands. Some run riot, massacring local species, trashing their new habitats and spreading diseases.

We all like a simple story with good guys and bad guys, so the threat of invasive species invading fragile environments and causing ecological mayhem instantly gets our attention. For half a century, conservationists have been in the forefront of the battle to hold back the invasive tide. And as an environmental journalist, I have written my share of stories about the mayhem they can cause.

Some of it is true. But do we fear the invaders too much? Do zebra mussels, kudzu, salt cedar and the rest do as much damage as is claimed? And what about the thousands of other visitors who fit in without trouble? Is our fear of invasive species little more than green xenophobia? In my new book The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation(Beacon Press, 2015), I explore these questions.

Most of us don’t treat foreign humans as intrinsically dangerous. Yet the orthodoxy in conservation is to stigmatize foreign species in just that way. Native is good, and foreign is bad. I believe it is time for a rethink—time to consider whether invasive species can sometimes be the good guys, and whether nature’s go-getters are actually rebooting ecosystems corrupted by human activity.

In my search for answers, I found numerous places—from Puerto Rico to Hawaii, San Francisco Bay to the urban badlands of Europe—where biodiversity is increasing and nature is recovering, thanks to invasive species. And there are many more places where interlopers once regarded as arch environmental villains are now quite at home and causing no lasting harm. Just like most human migrants.

There is a scientific dogma about the badness of invasive species that lurks in often outdated and ill-founded ideas about how ecosystems work. We often think of life on Earth as being made up of complex and tightly-knit ecosystems like rainforests, wetlands and coral reefs that have an intrinsic balance. We see pristine nature as perfected and stable biological machines in which every species has evolved to occupy a unique niche. So, the theory goes, losing a key native species or gaining a disruptive invasive one could be disastrous. Conservationists have to man the barricades to keep out the interlopers and maintain nature’s balance.

But fewer and fewer ecologists believe that this is how nature actually works. New ecological thinking holds that the structure of nature is often random, transient and accidental, constantly being remade by fire, flood, disease—and the arrival of new species. It is neither fragile nor finely tuned. It is temporary, versatile, resilient, adaptable and in a constant state of flux with species coming and going, fitting in, adapting or losing out. When invaded by foreign species, most ecosystems don’t collapse, and few natives go extinct. Often, they prosper better than before.

My conclusion is that in a world profoundly changed by humans, nature’s desperadoes and stowaways are its survival strategy—its best chance of surviving our chainsaws and ploughs, our pollution and climate change. The successful spread of invasive species—even with humans lending a helping hand—is often a sign of nature’s dynamism, not its enfeeblement. A sign that nature is not done, but can bounce back. True environmentalists should be applauding the invasive species. The old wild is dead; welcome to the new wild.

About the Author

Fred Pearce is an award-winning author and journalist based in London. He has reported on environmental, science, and development issues from eighty-five countries over the past twenty years. Environment consultant at New Scientist since 1992, he also writes regularly for the Guardian newspaper and Yale University’s prestigiouse 360 website. Pearce was voted UK Environment Journalist of the Year in 2001 and CGIAR agricultural research journalist of the year in 2002, and he won a lifetime achievement award from the Association of British Science Writers in 2011. His many books include With Speed and Violence,Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, The Coming Population Crash,andThe Land Grabbers.

It’s Our Turn to Lead: A Reading List for Earth Day 2015tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301b7c77ddebf970b2015-04-22T17:36:50-04:002015-04-22T17:36:50-04:00This Earth Day, we at Beacon Press are featuring titles that showcase individuals and organizations taking a stand for our home and encourage readers to take the stand with them.Beacon Broadside

By Christian Coleman

2015 marks the 45th anniversary of Earth Day. This could be the most dynamic year in environmental history. Economic growth and sustainability, once mutually exclusive, have begun a symbiotic relationship. Citizens and experts have set up defenses for their homes and the survival of other species from the encroaching effects of ecological devastation and extinction. New business ventures have transformed renewable energies into a viable market. As challenging and daunting as these issues are, it has become more apparent that we still have a chance of preserving our home. This Earth Day, we at Beacon Press are featuring titles that showcase individuals and organizations taking a stand for our home and encourage readers to take the stand with them.

Environmental journalist Fred Pearce presents a unique twist on a taking the lead on progress. In The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation, he implores environmentalists of the twenty-first century to celebrate the dynamic nature of invasive species and the new ecosystems they create. The case for keeping out invasive species is not only flawed, but also contradictory to the environment’s capacity for change, accelerated now by climate change and widespread ecological disaster.

California’s limited water resources have made headlines at the start of this year. It won’t be long until the rest of the country is affected by threats of shortage. Journalist Cynthia Barnett calls for the simplest and least expensive call to action in Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis. Selected as one of the Boston Globe’s top ten science books of 2011, it outlines a water ethic to reconnect Americans with our rivers, aquifers, and other freshwaters . This blue movement will turn us to “local water” the way the green movement turned us to local foods.

Animals in the wild live in the same precarious situation as their domesticated cousins on farms. Luckily, Nancy J. Merrick carries on the tradition of her former professor and colleague, Jane Goodall, to advocate for the lives of chimps. In Among Chimpanzees: Field Notes from the Race to Save Our Endangered Relatives, Merrick recounts her human paradigm shift when she discovers the civilizations of chimpanzees as a field assistant in Goodall’s famous Gombe Camp. Merrick returns to Africa decades later after working with Goodall to find that human agriculture and logging have driven chimps to extinction in four of the continent’s countries. She connects with primatologists and conservationists to turn the protection of our relatives a humanitarian cause.

Embracing Invasive Species: A Q&A with Fred Pearcetag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54ed2b7aa883301bb08181905970d2015-04-07T12:00:00-04:002015-04-09T14:39:11-04:00Most of us think in stark terms about invasive species: they are evil interlopers spoiling pristine "natural" ecosystems. But what if the traditional view of ecology is wrong—what if true environmentalists should be applauding the invaders? In his latest book, The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature's Salvation, veteran environmental journalist Fred Pearce argues that we should applaud the dynamism of alien species and the novel ecosystems they create. Recently, we talked with him about why he turned his focus to invasive species, what role humans have played in their rise, their benefits, and more. Beacon Broadside

Most of us think in stark terms about invasive species: they are evil interlopers spoiling pristine "natural" ecosystems. But what if the traditional view of ecology is wrong—what if true environmentalists should be applauding the invaders? In his latest book, The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature's Salvation, veteran environmental journalist Fred Pearce argues that we should applaud the dynamism of alien species and the novel ecosystems they create. Recently, we talked with him about why he turned his focus to invasive species, what role humans have played in their rise, their benefits, and more. Read on!

Fred Pearce: Invasive species are often said to be the second most important threat to nature, after habitat destruction. And for a long time I accepted that claim. As a journalist, I have written plenty of stories about various “alien threats,” from zebra mussels and kudzu to water hyacinth and snakeheads. But I also like to question environmental assumptions. And when I delved into the world of invasive species, I found that—unlike, for instance, the warnings of climate change—there was little evidence to back up the fears. I saw little evidence that there was anything intrinsically bad about invader species. Their downside is often hopelessly hyped; and their potential benefits, such as increasing local biodiversity, are almost never researched.

Environmentalists often condemn migrant species out of hand in the same way that some people condemn migrant humans—and using much the same toxic language. This is lazy thinking. And wrong. The more I looked into it, the more it seemed to me that invasive species might be just the boost that ecosystems messed up by humans often needed. They are often the go-getters, the can-do species that revitalize and reboot nature. They are pretty much the only way nature will cope with climate change, for instance. So demonizing and exterminating them wherever they appear seems like a bad idea.

It turned out I was not alone. I found plenty of “new ecologists” who take the same view. They say we should think of successful ecosystems as dynamic and constantly evolving, with outsider species often the most dynamic elements. Sometimes, I agree, we may want to control aliens because they damage our own activities or offend our aesthetics. But mostly the invaders are good for nature. True environmentalists should be on their side.

BP: What role have humans played in the rise of invasive species?

FP: Nature has always been on the move. Invasions are part of Darwinian evolution—throws of the dice that help ensure the survival of the fittest. But humans have certainly sped this up. You might say we humans are the greatest invader species of all, and we bring plenty of others along with us, whether we are moving crops around the world, or simply carrying species accidentally in ships’ ballast water or cargo holds.

The new arrivals can be very disruptive, especially at first. Look at Burmese pythons, the escaped pets eating their way through the small mammals of the Florida Everglades. But mostly the new arrivals—like human migrants—either fit in or move on. They usually do best in places already messed up by humans, revitalizing hollowed out ecosystems in the way human migrants can revitalize deprived and hollowed out neighborhoods. Even the most successful aliens rarely cause local extinctions. Mostly they leave the ecosystems they invade richer, more biodiverse, and better able to cope with the mess humans create. They are part of the solution, not the problem.

BP: What are some of the most misunderstood invasive species? How are they benefiting their new environments?

Take tamarisk, also called salt cedar, in the American west. Some see this old-world invader as a water-guzzling desert creator. There is a history of water politics behind that false claim that reads like an ecological version of the movie Chinatown. Mining companies demonized the shrub so they could kill it and claim the water “saved.” Gullible environmentalists went along with the story. Actually, tamarisk consumes no more water than local species like cottonwood, but often survives where cottonwood cannot. Tamarisk is holding back the desert. And it is a valuable wildlife habitat, the preferred nesting place for many birds, including the endangered southwester willow flycatcher.

Go to Puerto Rico and you find that alien species like the African tulip tree are the driving force behind a rewilding of the island after farmers who had destroyed the native forests abandoned their fields. The alien trees are reviving soils and providing homes for many birds—both native and alien—that are spreading the seeds of native trees. Without them, the island would still be an ecological basketcase.

Or go to San Francisco Bay, which is widely said to be the most invaded bay in the world. Ever since the Gold Rush, new species have been turning up here in large numbers. There are at least 300 alien species established in the bay, including Amur clams from Russia, Atlantic green crabs, Black Sea jellyfish, Chinese mitten crabs, Japanese gobies, and a sea slug from New Zealand. But this species melting pot is so successful that two years ago, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands accepted the US government’s designation of San Francisco Bay as a “Wetland of International Importance.” All those aliens must be doing something right.

BP: What recommendation would you give to conservationists who routinely demonize alien species outright?

Don’t take my word for it, but start asking questions about why we use such nasty language about foreign species, and why we would want to go round exterminating them. We wouldn’t do that to fellow humans without giving them a fair hearing, so why do that to other species? Always question the assumption that there is something intrinsically bad about an alien species. If a new alien species suddenly takes hold in your neighborhood, it is probably because the ecosystem is a mess thanks to human activity. By all means attack the root cause. But that is rarely the species itself, which is just taking advantage—and may actually be just what the ecosystem needs to recover. Also, remember that nature is constantly changing, even without human intervention. Change is not bad; it is natural. Too much conservation gets hung up on trying to preserve the past. We should celebrate nature’s dynamism and adaptability a lot more than we do.

About Fred Pearce

Fred Pearce is an award-winning author and journalist based in London. He has reported on environmental, science, and development issues from eighty-five countries over the past twenty years. Environment consultant at New Scientist since 1992, he also writes regularly for the Guardian newspaper and Yale University’s prestigious e360 website. Pearce was voted UK Environment Journalist of the Year in 2001 and CGIAR agricultural research journalist of the year in 2002, and he won a lifetime achievement award from the Association of British Science Writers in 2011. His many books include The New Wild, With Speed and Violence, Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, The Coming Population Crash,and The Land Grabbers.